Trip Woodard column: Bullying shouldn't be tolerated

Jan. 1, 2012

Written by

Trip Woodard

One reality of school life that can affect children of both intact and divorced families is bullying. I can speak from both clinical and personal experience; both my son and I have ourselves been victims of bullies.

In my situation, I had an advanced biology teacher named Ms. Goss who said, “Dahlins, I better not catch anyone bullying anyone else in my classroom” as part of her class introduction. Later, as two older students decided to make me a regular target for verbal abuse, I took her at her word and went to her for help. She didn’t do anything and nothing changed. In a way, that reality was worse than the actual bullying experience.

I was shocked when history repeated itself, and I found that my son was the target of much more intense bullying at his school.

In that situation, his mother and I contacted and collaborated with the middle school’s staff, who took the complaints seriously and effectively terminated the bullying behavior and provided great support for my son. I will never forget that and am always grateful when school officials post and follow a zero-tolerance policy for bullies.

On a national scale, bullying behavior has been linked to higher rates of teen suicide and increased violence in general. We live in a post-Columbine world that has impacted the policies of many schools about the dangerous potential outcome from ignoring bullies.

Types of bullying include physical, emotional and cyber bullying.

Examples of physical bullying can be hitting, kicking, poking and or pushing. Alert bullies will do this when they are without adult supervision with the agenda of baiting the victim into retaliating and becoming the one who is subsequently punished.

Emotional bullying can be repeated name-calling (again out of the earshot of an adult) or exclusions from activities (i.e., “I don’t want to play with her, she wears funny clothes”).

Cyber bullying can be vicious attacks made through text messaging; IMs, blogs, or messages placed on Facebook or MySpace accounts.

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Signs of bullying may include your child acting depressed (poor eating and/or sleeping at home), having somatic complaints like stomachaches or headaches, showing decreased academic performance, exhibiting signs of anxiety, having unexplained bruising and/or being afraid of going to school.

Should any of these signs be evident or if your child directly discloses to you that they are having a problem with bullies, here are a few ideas on what you can do:

Don’t panic. Calm yourself down before talking to your child. Reassure your child that this is not his or her fault and that it is something that you need to work on together. Let them know that this is not a problem they can solve on their own. Try to get as much information as you can as to the what, where, when and who of the bullying behavior.

Do not tell your child to strike back or just ignore the taunts. This simply does not work in today’s world.

Call for a conference with the school. Try to include the school counselor, the vice principal and appropriate teachers. Share your information and get a clear plan as to what the school is going to do next. There should be a multifaceted approach to terminating the bullying behavior (referral to a therapist, school disciplinary measures and heightened supervision of the bullies) and adequate protection/support for your child. This latter part is critical because your child will rapidly learn from what adults do and not say about the situation. Your follow-up on these plans and monitoring of results will be extremely important.

It all comes down to whether our children believe they can trust the educational system now and in the future to be a safe place where they can grow and learn. And maybe getting the message that when they feel helpless, there are options in life. Did you hear that, Ms.Goss?